Toushiro's big question
by paper-princess-94
Summary: This story's about why Toushiro has a legitimate reason for having such a hard time keeping his cool around his lazy and quite occasionally intoxicated second-in-command.


"Why me?" The eternal question which had plagued him for years, it felt as though his entire life had been revolving around that question since the day that he met Matsumoto for the first time. And what a first meeting it was, basically being composed of him being assaulted by her ridiculously large breasts and then being told to "act like a man and stop crying" after very nearly having his nose broken by the voluptuous redhead's assets.

He snickered slightly at the memory as he sat at his desk, a stack of papers which very nearly obscured his face coating his desk. He sighed. Thinking of Matsumoto only made him even more aware of the fact that she was now a grand total of two hours and thirteen minutes late. More than half of the paperwork on his desk was, in fact, hers, from yesterday when she decided that she would rather stay out drinking with Kira and the other lieutenants than come back to finish the work she had promised him she would do.

He made a decision; if she wasn't back in twenty minutes he would send someone to find her, then she'd have to come back and do her work.

He settled back in his chair, a pen in his hand and a self-satisfied grin on his face.

Twenty minutes came and went and there was still no sign of his lieutenant. He groaned as he stood up, stiff from the inactivity of days of paperwork, he stretched his arms above his head as he walked to the door. He peered out, looking for one of his subordinates with enough power to be able to persuade their (quite possibly drunk) second-in-command to leave her drinks behind and return to the office.

Eventually he spotted sight of the 7th seat Takezoe Kokichiro. He didn't seem to be doing anything important so he drew him to the side and gave him his request. At first he seemed a little apprehensive about trying to split up the lieutenant and her best friend but one look at the expression on his captain's face was enough to send him off at a jog in the direction of Matsumoto's favourite bar.

Toushiro returned to his desk, leaving the door open so that when she stumbled in she would be less likely to injure herself trying to get past the doorway. He could remember the one time when she had completely missed the door in her alcohol-fuelled state and had ended up waling straight into the wall three feet away with a dull crash.

Toushiro had rushed out; concerned that she could have injured herself, only to find her lying on her back, a bottle of sake clutched to her bosom like she didn't have twenty more bottles hidden around his office. That he knew of. There were probably more that he hadn't found, she could be surprisingly cunning when it came to the things she loved.

His mind was pulled back to the present by a soft knocking on the doorframe of his office. He looked up over his slowly decreasing workload and beckoned in the lieutenant who stood before him. Isane stood wringing her hands until he cleared his throat none too discretely and motioned for her to speak.

She blushed a deep pink as she bowed her head slightly and began to speak, "Captain Hitsugaya," she paused to look up at him, then looked back down at her feet when her eyes met his expressionless ones. She started again "Captain Hitsugaya, Captain Unohana thinks that you may need to come and collect your lieutenant personally, she is being a little anti-social. " She flinched again at his look, but continued, determined to complete her message, "she says that she is not bothered, but Rangiku-san is beginning to get dangerously close to the twelfth squad's quarters and Captain Kurotsuchi is looking for new test subjects." She visibly released a sigh of relief as her duties as messenger girl finished.

"Thank you for bringing me this message, lieutenant Kotetsu, do you think you could show me to where you last saw her?"

Isane nodded her head, her braid bouncing, and then turned on her heel and set off at a gentle speed, the captain behind her easily keeping pace despite the huge difference in leg-length. They looked a bizarre sight, with her being almost one and a half times taller than the young captain who ran beside her.

They kept up the easy pace until they turned a sharp corner, only to find two lieutenants slumped together against the wall, bright red hair mixing with spiky black. Toushiro could hear Matsumoto now, singing a slaughtered version of a song which was popular in the real world whilst they were there. He sighed and turned to Isane, "do you mind checking that they're ok?" he asked, waving his hand in the vague direction of the two unconscious shinigami.

"Of course" she said quietly, moving quickly to their sides, and gently shaking them, trying to rouse them from their sleep. "Renji-kun, Hisagi-kun, wake up please." Renji shrugged her hand off and turned towards Hisagi, burying his face in the other man's shoulder.

Toushiro could still hear the fourth squad's lieutenant's attempts at waking the two men as he turned the next corner and came face-to-face with his lieutenant, who was currently more intoxicated than he had ever seen her before. Impressively, Kira seemed to be holding both her weight and his own on his own equally shaky legs.

But, as he watched, Kira's legs buckled underneath him, sending him sprawling to the ground with an oblivious Rangiku on top of him. The busty lieutenant staggered to her feet, and suddenly seemed to notice her captain standing nearby, she giggled, then hiccupped and began to make her way towards the much smaller boy. She lurched sideways alarmingly, just missing her captain and instead landing in a heap beside him.

Toushiro just looked down and tutted, "Look at the mess you've got yourself into this time," He spoke softly to her as he reached down to pull her up. It couldn't be comfortable lying on your face when the ground was made of stone.

Suddenly he felt his hand grabbed in a death-grip and then he was being pulled down by his lieutenant, who was now sat up, the drunken blush of ignorance spreading across her face. He felt himself crushed against her, her arms so tight they almost cut off his breathing. But he saw nothing because his face had been squashed in between her breasts and he was now beginning to feel light headed from the lack of air.

Then she made him really angry.

As she was holding him so tightly she turned over onto her side, yawned, and began to fall asleep. Just before her eyelids shut she mumbled drunkenly, "I'm glad you're my captain, none of the others are cute enough to be a teddy bear." Then her head drooped and she began to snore gently, completely oblivious to the muffled shout of "MATSUMOTO!" which came from her chest.

Thirty minutes later 7th seat Takezoe Kokichiro jogged around the corner, his cheeks pink with the exertion of trying to find his wayward lieutenant, and stopped in his tracks. He wiped his eyes to make sure he wasn't imagining what he was seeing before him.

Lieutenant Matsumoto lay curled up in drunken slumber, her long hair falling across her face almost blocking his sight of the, now still, white hair of his young captain, who appeared to have collapsed from lack of oxygen.

After a few more moments he realized that he should probably aid his unconscious captain, who was still being crushed by his lieutenant. He moved cautiously towards the insensible pair, wary of being caught in a similar way, and knelt down beside Matsumoto.

"Matsumoto-san? Can you let go of the captain please?" He asked hopefully, hoping to avoid having to physically remove the captain from her dangerous embrace, but she just turned away from him, still asleep, and if anything held him tighter.

Kokichiro sighed, walked around to the other side of the second-in-command, and began the process of peeling her long arms off of the white-haired captain. After minutes of hard work and several subconscious slaps from the sleeping woman he managed to pull the captain away from her. He scrambled backwards to stop her from grabbing him back and looked down at the young captain.

The white-haired boy dragged in a long breath, his lungs desperately searching for air after their recent deprivation. His need for oxygen sated he moved onto the next most important order of business – yelling at his lieutenant.

"MATSUMOTO!" He shouted as loud as his recently reactivated lungs would allow.

Surprisingly, the lieutenant sat straight up at the sound of her captain sounding so angry.

"Oh, Captain." She looked around, taking in the still unconscious form of Kira, the shocked looking seventh seat and her red-faced boss in one sweep. "When did you get here?"

Toushiro dropped his face into his hands and muttered pleadingly under his breath, "Why me?"


End file.
